You’ll Have to Build Your Own

Today and day before yesterday, I used my new tractor fork to move a 70-foot oak. I feel like it’s safe to say this invention is a huge success and a giant improvement over what most people use.

The tines on the fork used to be 4 separate attachments. Each one had to be fastened to my tractor’s bucket with a chain and turnbuckle. They moved around when I used them, and I had to get on and off the tractor to put them back in place. When I tried to lift heavy things that were only a little wider than the gap between two tines, the tines would open up and drop the item. The chains were slowly destroying my bucket. It was stupid.

I hacked up the tines, discarding maybe 70 pounds of steel, including the chains and turnbuckles. I made a frame from heavy tubing, and I welded the tines to it. I made two plates that would connect to a quick attach adaptor, and I welded them to the frame. BANG. New fork.

If you look at it in a picture, it appears to be weak. You would think a heavy load would bend a tine downward. It looks like a blow to the side of a tine would bend it inward. No chance. I can stand on the end of a tine and jump up and down, and nothing happens. It’s much stronger than it looks.

A few days back, I was fiddling around in the woods, and I saw that a very tall tree had fallen across the dirt road that goes down the middle of the lot. It was stuck in another tree, so it leaned at about a 60-degree angle.

I had to move it. The road was unsafe with a big tree waiting to collapse on it. The cattle were in danger. Also, I didn’t want the leaning tree to destroy the tree that was holding its weight.

I went out with only a few tools. I had a hatchet, a tow strap, and an 18″ Makita electric chainsaw. Within about 90 minutes, the tree was flat on the ground, and I had moved about 15 feet of the trunk to the burn pile. By that time, the chainsaw batteries were dead, and I was dehydrated, so I quit.

Today I spent maybe two more hours, and I brought a timberjack so I could roll logs onto the fork. Now just about all of the tree is on the burn pile.

I had no problem lifting a 40-foot log that was about a foot thick on one end and 5″ thick on the other. This is the kind of thing buyers of $5000 grapples think is impressive. It’s like they have no idea a cheap, simple fork will do the same thing. I held the log up and sawed 5-foot lengths off each end until I had something I felt would be easy and safe to dump on the burn pile.

I could have carried the whole log to the pile, but that would have been dumb. Long objects can turn a tractor over if they’re not balanced right, and they can do funny things when dropped on a pile from 8 feet off the ground. Cutting the log up added maybe 10 minutes to the job, and it left me with a safer load.

I found something else the fork will do. If you lift the fork high and push it against a tree that’s rotten or just small, you can push it right over. No stump. The inner two tines prevent the tree from sliding out of the fork. The only problem is that the fork tends to slide up the tree. I can fix that by welding a piece of serrated steel to the frame to catch on tree bark.

I considered welding a hook to the frame in the same place, for chains and straps. I can’t do that if I put the log-catcher there. I can still put a hook on my bucket, though, and since I have a quick attach adaptor, switching to the bucket is fast and easy.

I’m thinking of things to do to my ballast box. This is a heavy steel box on the rear of the tractor. I put sand in it. It counteracts the weight of stuff on the front end loader and takes weight off the front axle. It’s not quite full of sand, and I can put a chainsaw and a few other things in the top.

I need more storage, however. I’m considering getting a Harbor Freight hitch cargo carrier. This is a cheap steel platform that goes in a trailer hitch receiver, like the one on my box. There are a couple of problems with these things. First, they are nearly bottomless. The bottom of a cargo carrier is just a few steel tubes several inches apart. I guess I could put expanded metal or plywood in it. The second problem is that cargo carriers can wobble around in receivers. I don’t know if that would bother me or not.

Right now, I have a big steel hook in the receiver. The purpose is to let me connect a strap, brush grubber, or chain, so I can do light pulling. I don’t think it’s a great idea to pull really hard on a ballast box receiver, but removing shrubs and little stumps should be no problem at all. If I don’t use the hook, I have to run the strap or whatever under the box to the tractor, and that’s kind of a pain.

Someone suggested I connect a short chain to the tractor’s drawbar. I guess I’ll do that. I will then be able to connect things to the chain without getting between the tractor and box. I’ll be able to rest the chain on the box or something when I’m not using it, so it will be handy.

I have considered buying or making a chainsaw holder. When I put a chainsaw in the box, I have to keep a scabbard with it. I have to make sure the scabbard is on the saw when it’s in the box so the chain doesn’t gouge things. Putting the scabbard on and taking it off gets to be inconvenient.

A company called Sawhaul makes a polyethylene saw holder you can mount on any flat piece of steel. It looks fine, but the price is insane. They want $150 for something that should cost $50, and people say the polyethylene gets torn up and has to be replaced. I’m thinking I might be better off making something from pressure-treated wood. I’m not sure. If I get a cargo carrier, a chainsaw holder will be pointless.

I’m also thinking of making a hook for my subsoiler. A subsoiler has a single bar of steel that goes down in the ground, and it has a flat blade attached to it. The bar has about a 45° bend in it. You can use the subsoiler to dig shallow trenches in a hurry. It’s also useful for lifting stumps, but because the bar has such a wide bend in it, it slips off the stumps. If it had a 90° bend, it would hold on and lift better. This would give me 3300 pounds of lift, concentrated on a very small area.

Stumps need vertical lift. They don’t resist it very well. They’re great at withstanding sideways force. Obviously, a 3300-pound lift will do more than a much smaller force applied at 45° from vertical.

A lot of guys use something called a stump bucket to remove stumps. This is a thing that looks sort of like the lower jaw on a tyrannosaurus. It goes on a front end loader. It has serrations where the dinosaur’s teeth should be, to prevent stumps from sliding off.

It’s a great tool. For a skid steer or track loader. A skid steer will lift several times what a tractor will, so the bad leverage you get from a long bucket out in front of a front end loader is not a problem. Stumps come flying out. A tractor can’t lift nearly well enough to make a stump bucket work well, unless the tractor is enormous. There are Youtube videos of skid steers and tractors using stump buckets, and the difference is disturbing, if you own a tractor. Guys on tractors have to nibble and nibble and nibble.

Tractor:

Skid steer:

A subsoiler with a hook would be very different from a long stump bucket. It would be right under the 3-point hitch, so no lifting power would be lost. If the tractor can lift 3300 pounds, I’ll get 3300 pounds of lift at the stump. I think it will work.

A guy in the Netherlands has a tiny Kubota with a front end loader attachment which is a single piece of plate steel on a quick-attach mount. The piece that does the work has a profile like a rhino horn. It seems to work much better than a stump bucket, probably because a bucket is a foot wide and spreads force out over a huge area. If he can do great things with a single piece of plate on a weak front end loader, I should be able to do much better with a subsoiler hook.

I bent my subsoiler working on stumps, so I welded gussets in and replaced the little lower pins with a solid bar of steel about three feet long. It should be way harder to bend now. If it does bend, I’ll reinforce it some more. Welders don’t have to put up with any BS from steel tools. It will do what I want, or I will add steel until it does.

Anyway, the fork is a total success. Wish I had had it 5 years ago. When you need the right tool, just buy it or make it. Don’t cuss and do nothing while life passes you by.